ABSTRACT
The whole Soviet Union is now covered with a network of so-called ‘collective farms.’ Amateur acting is not entirely new in the western rural areas. In 1917 the local school-teacher took down some of the local songs, and he and others used them in a play, called Old Times in Gdov , which came to the Moscow Theatre of People’s Art in 1939. There were in 1939 some three hundred permanent theatres touring the collective farms, with an average company of twenty professionals. The Oirot Collective Farm Theatre, serving the wild Kalmucks on the Mongolian border, has to cover great distances on foot among the Altai Mountains. The companies, also, playing continually to audiences which are, though scattered, all in the same way of life, get to understand the problems and psychology of the audiences to a more intimate and authentic degree than the best Central Theatres can do with their faithful but motley gatherings.
